CS 242

Autumn 2012

Programming Languages
Steve Cooper

Course web site: join CS242 at courseWare.stanford.edu

Course Themes
Programming Language Concepts
A language is a conceptual universe (Perlis)
Framework for problem-solving
Useful concepts and programming methods

Understand the languages you use, by comparison

Appreciate history, diversity of ideas in programming
Be prepared for new programming methods, paradigms, tools

Critical thought
Identify properties of language, not syntax or sales pitch

Language and implementation

Every convenience has its cost
Recognize the cost of presenting an abstract view of machine
Understand trade-offs in programming language design

Language goals and trade-offs

Architect

Programmer

Programming
Language
Testing
Diagnostic
Tools

Compiler,
Runtime
environment

Value of Language Concepts

Ancient history
I started programming in 1970s
Dominant language was Fortran; no recursive functions
Actually, in WAT IV, there were no while or for loops

Today: recursive functions everywhere

Moral
Futuristic ideas may be useful problem-solving methods now, and may
be part of languages you use in the future

More recent examples

Function passing: pass functions in C by building your own closures, as
in STL function objects
Continuations: used in web languages for workflow processing
Monads: programming technique from functional programming
Concurrency: atomicity instead of locking

Whats new in programming languages

Commercial trend over past 5+ years
Increasing use of type-safe languages: Java, C#,
Scripting languages, other languages for web applications

Teaching trends
Java replaced C as most common intro language
Less emphasis on how data, control represented in machine

Research and development trends

Modularity
Java, C++: standardization of new module features

Program analysis
Automated error detection, programming environment, compilation

Isolation and security

Sandboxing, language-based security,

Web 2.0
Increasing client-side functionality, mashup isolation problems

Whats worth studying?

Dominant languages and paradigms
Leading languages for general systems programming
Explosion of programming technologies for the web

Important implementation ideas

Performance challenges
Concurrency

Design tradeoffs
Concepts that research community is exploring
for new programming languages and tools

First half of course

Introduction, JavaScript
Haskell
Functional lang. used in lectures 5-7 and concurrency

Foundations
Lambda calculus, structured operational semantics,

Scope and stack storage allocation

Types and parametric polymorphism
Type classes ad hoc polymorphism in Haskell
IO Monad example of Haskell monad concept
Exceptions and Continuations
Modularity (not on midterm)
--------------------- Midterm Exam -----------------------Wed October 24, 7-9 PM

Second half of course

Objects
Prototypes, classes, inheritance
Object types and subtyping
Implementation structures
Templates and Generics
Concurrency
---------------- Thanksgiving Break ---------------- Software Transactional Memory
Atomicity and advanced topics
Review
--------------------- Final Exam ------------------------

Assignments and Grading

Homework

40%

Weekly: Wednesday to Wednesday

3 late days per quarter, MAXIMUM ONE EACH WEEK

Exams
Midterm: two hour evening exam
Final: regularly scheduled exam time

25%
35%

Programming (JS, Haskell, C++, Java)

Some programming assignments, auto-graded
Part of weekly homework

Course Logistics
Policies and procedures
See information on web: CourseWare CS242 FAQ
Honor Code, Collaboration Policy

Homework grader?
Send email to cs242fall2012@cs.stanford.edu email address

CAs, Office hours, Email policy,

Use CourseWare for all discussion no email discussion!!!

Reading material
Book available in bookstore (Concepts in Programming Lang)
Supplementary reading on web

See web site

General suggestions
There is something difficult about this course
May be hard to understand homework questions
Thought questions: cannot always run and debug
May sound like there is no right answer, but some
answers are better than others

Many of you may be used to overlooking language

problems, so it takes a few weeks to see the issues

Questions?